


we know not that we move

by Charis



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Anatomical improbabilities, Authorial Shame, Blow Jobs, Centaurs, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Finger Sucking, Interspecies Relationship, Interspecies Sex, Large Cock, Masturbation, Nymphs & Dryads, Outdoor Sex, Porn with Feelings, Size Kink, Spring, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Vaginal Fisting, What did I just write?, liberties taken with mythology, semi-sentient trees, sentimentality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-24 03:20:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9697400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charis/pseuds/Charis
Summary: “You’re late.”His crooked half-smile does nothing to hide the naked hunger. “You had yourself well in hand.”Winter gives way to spring without and within, and as always, he is there.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shadow_in_the_shade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_in_the_shade/gifts).



> For Rose. She knows why. :P
> 
> Title from Dinah Craik’s “Immutable”: _So rolls the changing year, and so we change; / Motion so swift, we know not that we move._

> _I come, I come! ye have called me long,_  
>  _I come o’er the mountain with light and song:_  
>  _Ye may trace my step o’er the wakening earth,_  
>  _By the winds which tell of the violet’s birth,_  
>  _By the primrose-stars in the shadowy grass,_  
>  _By the green leaves, opening as I pass._  
>  \- Felicia Hemans, “Voice of Spring”

Sun-warm and languid, she stretches and settles back into the cradle of her tree. The countryside spreads out below her, rolling and green with new growth, pulsing with life reawakening as winter cedes to spring. Her tree is old, established; she has known many springs, felt these tides move through her time and time again, and it always makes her body hum and ache, impatient and needy.

(She wonders where he is; she wonders, as always, if he will come.)

It’s foolish, perhaps, to think after so long that he will not. He has been here for nearly all of her springs, to the point that the thought of him twines inevitably with her awareness of it; she catches herself listening for the sound of hooves behind the birdsong, the scent of his musk against damp earth and green things, finds herself remembering past years and feels that ache focus, intensify. She has always wanted, with the spring, but that she wants _him_ is still and ever a surprise. (That he wants her is another; she knows his kind are wild, driven by their needs, but there has always been an underlying softness to him when he touches her that makes her wonder at his reasons for coming back. But she does not ask, and he does not offer, and when her winter harshness melts again, he is always there.)

But he is not here yet, and yet she needs, and so she leans into the branches and lets the sun soak into her skin. Her fingers chase the dappled patterns of light and shadow from the leaves, skim across her own body. She wants, as the earth around her wants -- as her tree wants, shivering in the breeze -- but he is not yet here, and so she lets her thoughts drift to days gone by and lets her hands follow after them, stoking the hunger and feeling her body wake, roused by her own touch. She remembers --

(His warmth, fierce and hot as the sun, against her. The feel of his hands gentle on her skin for all their roughness, all their size. The press of him into her, the glorious ache of stretching, opening, welcoming him in --)

One hand on her breast (she remembers the rasp of his beard against the tender skin, the heat of his mouth, drags nails against the crest as she thinks of the bite of his teeth), the other between her thighs (his mouth preparing her, a kiss she had never known before, his fingers working deep, the shocking delight of taking him deeper still), she loses herself in memory. With each stroke she warms, a bud unfurling, blossoming, eager for touch and aching, wanting, needing --

The peak catches her unexpectedly, builds faster than she realised, leaves her arching and crying out, eyes shuttering and hands stilling as pleasure washes through her, swamps her, bursts with a fire-bright intensity. Her breath catches and then hitches back in, unsteady, her thighs trembling as they splay apart. She lifts her fingers from between them, but before she can decide what to do with them a needy sound wins from a throat not her own, and she breathes in, catches the familiar scent of musk and warmth, and,

“You’re late.”

His crooked half-smile does nothing to hide the naked hunger. “You had yourself well in hand.”

She says nothing to that, just extends the hand in question to him. He takes it without comment, circles her wrist with his fingers -- the only shackle she will ever accept -- and brings it to his lips. At the first touch of his tongue, they both groan, almost in echo. It is soft, delicate, a butterfly’s caress measured against the firm press of his grip, and the touch and the contrast make heat pulse between her thighs. The slow slip of his eyes closed, the unfeigned delight she sees on his face, does nothing to lessen the arousal. To know he wants has only ever made her want him more. And she knows him, after all these years, better than she knows any other creature, and yet with each and every spring she finds she wants to know him deeper, truer, wants impossibly _more_.

She wants more now, too, but it is a need far more physical than not, has her swaying towards him even though her body is still loose-limbed, drawn to him as she has been from the first. She wants, and so she pulls her fingers from his mouth, leans down and kisses him until the surprise softens and his lips part for her. There is languid ease to the kiss, though she can feel the need shivering through him as her hand caresses his cheek. He may not feel the tides of the earth as she does, but it has been too long for him as well; that, too, she knows.

It is that thought which compels her to further motion, shifting to the lowest branch of her tree so she can study him properly. There are new scars on his flanks, paler lines against chestnut hide, and she wants to lash out at whoever put them there almost as much as she wants to trace them with fingers and mouth alike; she does neither, however, just drinks in his presence, and if she can feel his eyes on her in turn then it simply fans the fires that are still coiling through her.

“I wasn’t certain you’d come,” she says, and his eyes snap back to her face.

The smile he gives her is a lopsided thing, apologetic and wry, and neither that nor his sardonic words mask the intensity in his gaze. “All this time, and you still doubt?”

She had; she thinks perhaps she always will, with the winters that stretch between them, and when his kind are prone to straying -- but she has no right to judge if he has, no matter how the thought makes her ache and has anger bubbling in her breast. But she forces it down for what she does have, here and now, and leans back into the cradle of branches that puts her height even with his. “Come here.”

It is half a command, and one he obeys without hesitation. She tangles her fingers into his unruly windswept hair and kisses him again, more thoroughly this time, leaning into him and feeling the warm solid plane of his chest pressing into her own softness. His hands flutter almost uselessly for a moment, as if trying to decide where to go, before one cups the back of her head and the other smooths over her backside, pulling her even closer. She sighs, lets her lips part, tastes him as his tongue slips into her mouth and the ghost of herself on him in turn, and it fans the flames. She wonders briefly if it is a metaphor, for how they carry traces of each other when apart, but that thought too she forces away. What matters is the now, and she wants him, not his memory.

It is her turn to catch his hand, dragging it around to where her thighs have parted in invitation. She wants more than just his fingers, but she is no fool; she will need this first, as much to take the edge off as to ready herself. His hungry groan as one finger slides through her folds and sinks into her without the slightest resistance makes her think perhaps he needs this too, as does the tightening of his other hand in her hair. _Earth and sky,_ she thinks, half prayer and half epithet, as she cants her hips into his touch. It’s been too long, too long, and this should not be familiar, and yet --

He pauses with three fingers to the hilt inside her, moving them apart and together again in tiny increments; she doesn’t try to hold back her own groan, not then and not as his thumb settles against her clit, the lightest of strokes. He’s going too slowly, and it has her arcing up, tearing away from the kiss to groan out, “ _More_.”

“More?” There’s a quiet laugh in his voice, and she thinks he will tease but he gives it to her, all four fingers inside her now, moving with a sound so slick as to be obscene, but it’s still not enough and so she repeats her demand. His hand stills as he looks down at her, and though the hunger darkening his blue eyes is unmistakable still he waits, until she grinds down against him. The touch of him inside her is doing little but sparking memories, does nothing to alleviate the ache, and she whines and rolls her hips, wanting, needing, desperate for all he will give her. And he does give it to her now, fingers unknotting from her hair so his arm can settle across her abdomen and hold her still.

 _More,_ she thinks again, but her cry of protest takes on a different note altogether as his thumb moves over slippery skin to brush against her entrance. It should be too much -- it should _already_ be too much -- but it’s nowhere near what she needs, and so she just shudders and opens her legs wider in invitation, and as he slowly works it into her she waits and waits and waits, hungry for what she knows is soon to follow. The stretch is nearly unbearable and yet even the frisson of pain in it is pleasure, lancing along her nerves.

And there is still more, and so she forces herself to breathe, to relax, not to fight the weight of his arm like a brand against skin already too hot, not to pull away or bear down even if she wants both, and her patience is rewarded as the push and the stretch become impossibly greater. She thinks, as she always thinks, that it will be too much, that surely she cannot, but his skin slides easily against her own, and the catch of his knuckles as they too slip past only makes her gasp. His soft sound of wonder is almost lost in the sounds of flesh on flesh as the rest of his hand follows, but it has her forcing her eyes open, wanting to see him.

“You’re perfect,” he rasps; his eyes, as they lock with hers, are nearly black; she wonders fleetingly, incongruously, if her own reflect that. “Gods above, Anne, I want --”

But what he wants will have to wait, as he cuts off his own words, white teeth digging into his lip in concentration as his fingers curl slowly together inside her. Were he not holding her steady her hips would have shot up; as it is she writhes in the small space between him and her tree, desperate to get away, desperate for so much more -- and he gives her neither, just the slow tightening of his hand. It feels like forever before he moves it, and it could be just the tiniest distance but it feels like so much, and she wails and clutches at the branches. If she could she would be begging, demanding, more and more and even more, but she cannot find the words as the sparks of pleasure grow, fanned impossibly higher with each small movement. And this is only his hand; she knows what is yet to come. She knows, and she burns all the more for the memory, burns all the more as he moves inside her, burns for him and for all that only he has ever managed to give her, and all too quickly knows nothing at all as the slick slip and slide and the rough graze of his knuckles sends her hurtling over the edge.

She is trembling when the world returns, quivering with the aftershocks of her orgasm and the almost-absent circles his thumb traces around her clit. Her limbs are lax but her mind is nothing of the sort; even now, when she should be sated, it clamours for still more -- for all of him. And so she manages to lift one hand, though her body feels soft and nearly boneless, curls her fingers into the mane tracing the length of his spine and tugs so he looks up at her. His expression is a mix of hard and soft, lust and something gentler she is unwilling to name, hopeful and hungry all at once, and she knows he wants but will not push, and it makes her chest ache in turn. His kind do not wait, she knows -- his kind _take_ , as a rule, but he has always asked, though never with words.

(And her kind do not devote themselves to a single soul, and yet every spring she waits and she wonders and she hopes, and if one year he did not come, she does not know what she would do. It is a thought she shies away from every time; though she has never given it voice, it is a thought she could not bear.)

And still the words will not come, and so she just kisses him without comment, soft and then harder, tasting him. She wants to drown in his presence, wants so much more of him -- bites down on his lower lip and swallows up his shuddering exhalation. “Anne,” he groans, a desperate needy sound.

Her other hand is flat against his chest; she pushes him back, enough that she can move. “Yes,” she answers before he can assume the worst, watches his throat work as he swallows, as his nostrils flare. As he steps back she can see that his cock has slipped free from its sheath, dark and hard and bobbing with his movements, and the ache between her thighs sharpens, deepens. “Yes,” she repeats, but she wants to taste him too, and it has her rising on unsteady legs. The grass is soft beneath her bare feet, his skin softer still, warm as she runs her hands over his flank, feeling the play of muscle beneath velvety hide. As she sinks to her knees, she can see the shiver reverberate through him, watches as his cock twitches in response, twitches again as she curls her fingers lightly around it. The sheer size of him makes her tremble afresh -- it takes both of her hands to encircle him, lifting the dripping crown to her lips. When she kisses him, his entire body tenses; when she drags her tongue against the head, he moans, shudders.

“Fuck --” the epithet sounds bitten-off, torn from his throat, and she doesn’t need the help but it makes her wetter, hungrier, to realise he’s just as needy as her, “fuck, please, I want you, please --”

She draws in another breath, drinks in the scent of his musk, before sucking the bottom edge of his flared head into her mouth and letting the taste of him coat her tongue. It would be impossible to take more of him but this is enough for her, and the sound of his groans and the barely-restrained rolling of his hips tells her it’s almost too much for him. And as appealing as the idea of letting him spend like this is, as much as she likes the thought of watching him water the ground and her tree’s roots with his seed, she wants him in her, and so with one last kiss she climbs back to her feet again.

It had been awkward in the beginning, she remembers -- more desire than sense and more need than either -- but with the years the rhythms have become as familiar as the seasons themselves, and as she turns back to her tree she knows he is behind her. The branches shift with her thoughts, shape and smooth under her hands, and she lets them cradle her, open and hungry and nearly trembling with anticipation. He doesn’t make her wait long; she isn’t sure if he could, not when she knows how badly he needs this too, but it seems as if it’s only moments before his forelegs settle against the bark before her and his hardness presses slickly against her. She reaches back -- he cannot, the angles too strange and strained -- and twists her head to watch, delighted by the sight of her own hand small and pale as it lifts his cock, tilts it for a better angle.

Another push against her, another slight shift, and then everything is right and he is pressing not against but into her, and she has to take her hand away again to support herself as that flared head breaches her. She has thought his hand too much before, as she always does, but it is nothing compared to this stretch; she finds herself panting, feels her wetness trickling down her thighs and the hard points of her nipples scraping against the bark and the slow, insistent push of him, and thinks _too much_ but it’s not -- not when she _still_ wants more. And so she rocks her hips back into him, and he cries out above her, hooves scrabbling against bark and earth alike, and then the head has breached her and their groans echo, twine and twin as everything shudders still for a moment. She can feel his heartbeat pulsing inside her, the slow throb of his cock where it burns within her own heat, an echo of the tides around them, and it has her reaching up one hand until her fingers find his, twine through them. His hand flexes closed around her own, as if he had been as desperate for the contact as she, an anchor within this storm.

There are words on the tip of her tongue but they die in an inarticulate, hungry sound as he rocks further into her, a little deeper each time. She feels open, spread wide nearly to breaking, and yet with him covering her it is not unsafe -- is anything but that, nothing but pleasure so vast and overwhelming it leaves her unable to do more than gasp and sob and twist and want, pinned between rough bark and velvet softness. He is huge inside her, and though he cannot touch her as a more human lover might his presence still surrounds her, scent and radiant warmth and the flick of his tail against her skin and the fingers enveloping her own, and she abandons trying to hold herself up in favour of working her other hand back between her thighs, pressing desperately against her swollen clit -- and it’s all too much, so quickly, not enough and yet too much and she is shrieking, spasming, soaking them both even further as she peaks and her mind goes blank with the white-hot pleasure of it all and --

And he is still moving in her in shallow strokes; he is still hard and hot and unfulfilled even as she clutches at him without and within, drowning in the pleasure of it all, and she relaxes her grip, strokes her thumb against his in reassurance. “Yes,” she says once more, and it’s nearly an entreaty this time, cracked and raw and hungry, “Athos, _please_ ,” and that must be the encouragement he has been waiting for, because he surges forward in response. It’s all she can do to hold on as he does so, the force of his thrusts driving her hard against her tree over and over again, and it should hurt but she’s so wet he moves with little resistance, just the slick smooth slide of that impossible fullness within her, and he’s moaning somewhere above her, groaning, crying out, pleas and epithets and her name in an incoherent tangle of sound, and she wants -- ah, earth and sky, she _wants_ , wants him, wants forever, and the feel of him driving deep one last time and swelling within her and the sound of her name spilling from his lips even as he spills his seed into her pull her along and over and it is all too much, and what choice does she have but to shatter again with him, lost to the overwhelming sensations?

Afterwards will always be awkward, because she wants to feel him inside her as long as she can but she also wants the reassuring softness of his touch, to see his face and to kiss him with all that she refuses to say still heavy on her tongue. And so she does not do more than make a vague sound of protest as he slips free, folding to settle against the base of her tree. His hair is dark with sweat, his flanks still heaving, his skin damp and warm when she manages to coax her heavy limbs into motion and curls against him. His eyes do not open, but he tips his head into her hand, kisses her palm before offering his mouth up to hers; his kiss, too, tastes of unspoken promises. And she is trembling and sticky and aching and exhausted, but there is a shiver of pleasure yet in thinking of how she got to that state, and this is where she wants to be, and so she just sighs and relaxes against him.

“I’m glad you came,” she says, as she always does; she dares not say any more.

His lashes lift now; his eyes are bluer from this close, soft and a little sad, and she wonders -- not for the first time -- at what his silences hide. “Always,” he replies, but this is new and surprise has her pulling back, only to be stopped by the warmth of his hand against her spine and the curve of the roots beyond. _Always_ , and it sounds like a promise, and though it should not her heart leaps in her chest.

“I’ll change,” she warns him, still holding herself apart, because promises mean nothing without truth laid bare -- and she will, and he knows but he doesn’t. He has seen her springtime bloom, some of her summer warmth, a little of her autumnal heaviness, but none of the cold and crack of winter, and she is not sure she wants him to, not if it means he looks at her like she is a stranger. She is who she must be to survive, who the world makes her, and she cannot change that. In her heart of hearts, she would not wish to.

“Yes,” he answers, as if it is that simple -- but it cannot be; that much she knows.

“You’ll --”

“I won’t.”

“You can’t say --”

“I won’t,” he repeats, implacable, “because you will be _you_ , no matter what changes.”

And she wants to argue -- earth and sky, how she wants to argue with him, call him a fool and a simpleton for believing it can be that easy -- but his kind are stubborn too, and in that he is a centaur through and through. And so she leans back into the cradle of the roots and thinks instead, of innumerable springs and how he has always been there, of the certainty of him and how he has become a fixture in her days, thinks of wanting more and more and even that elusive forever, and wonders (and perhaps she is the fool between them, to think it) if this is what it means for a bird to love a fish, or if this can truly be possible, and if she dares to risk all they have for a chance at something more.

“Fool,” she says aloud, though she does not know which of them she is chiding, because she is settling back into his arms, and it is the most natural thing in the world to tuck her head against his collarbone and listen to the thump of his heart against his ribs, echoing the pulse of sap in her tree and the waking of the world around them.

“Yes,” he agrees once again, and this time she does not protest.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like this is one for the [AO3 tag generator](http://www.generatorland.com/usergenerator.aspx?id=9094). “Sentimental centaur fisting” or something like that? >_______>


End file.
